


In the end, the broken end

by DarcyIncarnate, Ni-hilism (Ni_hilism), Omgplsletmehaveusername



Category: Digitalta's Digital Wonderland (Discord server)
Genre: Blood, Body horror mentions, Body mutilation mentions, Child Death, Corpse mentions, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drowning Mention, Eye Horror, Gen, Gore, Gunshot Wounds, Hypothermia and pneumonia mentions, I can't believe we did this, If someone is happy read the next sentence, Mentions of hope, Poison, Religious Mentions, Rot mention, Self mutilation mentions, Self-Sacrifice, Suicide, Vomit, You lot made me write a self insert fic but I cant bring myself to be mad at you, backstabbing, concussion mention, lots of death, no one is happy, sadfic, self harm mentions, starvation mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 13:25:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19274224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarcyIncarnate/pseuds/DarcyIncarnate, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ni_hilism/pseuds/Ni-hilism, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omgplsletmehaveusername/pseuds/Omgplsletmehaveusername
Summary: The culmination of a festering of words in the brains of three people too far gone to notice the smell.Enjoy the result.





	In the end, the broken end

Ani ran.

Their chest heaved as they sprinted in the direction of the gunfire. The direction of Sketch. The direction of their child in all but blood. A moot point, perhaps, considering how much blood Ani themself had spilt for them.

The branches around them scratched and scraped at their body, pulling, urging them to stop for just one moment, but they kept sprinting, slipping and sliding through the snow and sleet. Their clothes had long since soaked through and were heavy with water and the risk of hypothermia. Pneumonia hadn’t seemed so bad until they watched someone drown in their own lungs. Their hair thrashed in a wild mess around them as they whipped towards the changed direction of the sound.

"ANI"

They could almost hear the voice. It was just their name, one they hadn’t even liked for such a long time, and yet it filled them with so much raw fear they didn't know what to do with themself.

So, they ran, and they ran, and they ran until that ever-familiar heavy metallic scent filled their nostrils. It was almost enough for them to give up. For their knees to lock and the ground to hurtle upwards and- oh, let it finally be over and done. But they didn't. They couldn’t.

They staggered towards the bloody chunks on the ground, a soft gurgling sound emitting from the throat of the almost-corpse.

They flipped the body over.

Immediately they recognized the faded tan and short dark hair, beautiful features stained and twisted up in the desperate agony of the child in front of them. Guppy.

Ani assessed the almost-body. Or girl rather. Shot in the throat. Brutal, yet efficient. She would most definitely die, they knew from experience there was no way she could be saved. And Ani knew they needed to focus on the ones that could be. Mercy and tears could wait. Mercy and tears would wait.

And yet, as Guppy choked on the ground, scrabbling weaker in every second passing, Ani still felt like they needed to do something.

Something.

Anything.

Guppy's eyes seemed to bore into her own, as she gasped for air.

Help me, save me, make it stop, her eyes begged.

A tear slipped unbidden down their face. They took Guppy’s hand in their own.

All they could do was sit and weep, gripping Guppy as hard as they dared whilst she succumbed and let the world finally bleed out to blessed darkness.

Ani steeled themself, stood, and left.

The dead would stay dead.

And they still had people to protect.

-

Ron's smile never left her face, her confidence in them unwavering.

Even as the red-hot knife slid through her and spread its filth and muck like her own personal plague. Even as her eyes spluttered tears of agony and she whispered deliriously to the air. Even as her guts spilt through her clenched fingers and the shoddily cauterised wounds festered into putrid rot. Until her jerking breath ceased, Ron's smile never left her face.

Roy's on the other hand, never seemed to come back.

"My sunshine," Her usually strong voice cracked. "Please don't leave me,"

But as flesh sloughed off from under Ron's hands everyone present could tell she was gone.

It was a full hour before Ani could get Roy to leave the corpse. Even then, they felt as though they had left a part of Roy there, in the place where Ron rotted alive, the place where one of the brightest lights of their group had finally extinguished.

They wanted so badly to just give in to the ever-clawing misery. But they refused to shed any more tears. They couldn't.

Who else would keep them all safe? There were still people to protect.

That didn't stop the smell from lingering and maggots from squirming their squalid dances in the corners of their vision.

-

They were halfway through a hike across a mountain when it happened again.

"Adel!" Asstolfo's sharp cry rang out despite the winds surrounding them. Ani turned, to see Asstol stabbed through with a makeshift spear, little more than warped iron wrapped lovingly to a twig. The pole flew true for all its rudimentary construction, barely missing Adel, shoved to the ground by Asstol’s panicked save.

She gasped, quiet understanding, or the idea of it, ripping the sound out of her. She turned to Ani, pitying eyes filled with unshed tears.

"I understand," Her eyes were so full of sympathy and compassion and misery and love, love love, that Ani, in the coming days of feeble and desperate attempts to save her, could not bear to tell her that they had no idea what she meant.

They could find out later. They would have to. Perhaps Asstol would whisper it to them in the maddening nonsensical nightmares that were coming more frequently each night.

They didn't mind the dreams, they served as a reminder. They would never rest while they still had people to protect.

-

Instead of snow that night, it rained. Cold, cold, rain that bit through them all like the desperate hungry dogs they felt in their cores. Ani cursed themselves for agreeing to this fool’s trek through the elements. But hope was hope, no matter how slim.

"It’ll be fine! We already scouted this area, and we can't just let someone go cold," Ani remembered Adel’s words clearly. It seemed so long ago, they thought bitterly, gazing at the corpse before her.

Adel lay curled stiff and frozen with her face contorted in a scream that they could feel dancing up their spine as she clutched and clawed at herself. Half of a broken dart lounging innocuously beside her.

Poison, a powerful and fast-acting neurotoxin, if Ani had to guess. And a rather terrible one at that. They could almost see the lethal path it had travelled through Adel’s skin. Dimly, they deliberated how long it had taken and why none of them had heard Adel’s cries. Perhaps this variant seized up the throat muscles. The tip seemed to snap off inside so there was little one could do once it was in. They wondered if it was replicable. Kae needed to keep her story going, she needed to survive. And for Kae to survive, for Sketch and Roy and Wolf and all the children and adults alike depending on them to survive, they needed to fight back.

So as the breathy wailing cries went up around them and the sky dribbled its final dirge of a farewell, they stared stonily and took a sample of the foul gunk oozing like molasses. Someone had to keep the strength. They wouldn't stop trying. Any hope. Any hope.

If it meant some shot them dirty or fearful looks they could deal with that.

After all only the living could spit filthy words at them, or they'd tell themselves that at night when Adel's frozen hands pawed at their throat and begged them to save her. They promised on the bruises that Adel left them, they would keep them safe. They would keep them all safe.

-

They were surrounded.

The group had almost made it across the mountain before they were ambushed, and now, because they had been so caught up in their desperate research and plans to end it all, they were surrounded. The only possible way to shelter was blocked, Ani couldn't even estimate the number. There was nothing. Nothing they could do. They were useless, they had failed everyone. This was all their fault they should never have even tried. They could feel the loathsome welling of tears like pus in a wound-

"I'm blowing these fuckers to hell, be ready," Gomi muttered to Senii, nudging open his jacket to reveal the line of grenades strapped to his chest, along with bags of gun powder along his waist, and TNT strapped to both his arms and stomach. Pulling out a single worn cigarette lighter, he took a single step forward before Senii grabbed him.

"If we're doing this, we're doing it together," Her voice was strong and sure, despite its obvious waiver. "Besides, I want a shot at him." They smiled shakily at each other, before stepping forward.

Ani glanced around them. No one else seemed to have noticed the exchange. They were the only one that could stop them. They were children, two of the youngest and they loved them dearly. Ani clenched their fists. Were they really going to sacrifice two innocents for the sake of their precious wonderland? Yeah, that seemed like something they’d do. They were disgusted in themselves.

_Senii held up her crossbow, the string taut and waiting._

They had to do something right now if Senii shot that, they would swarm after her. The children, their children, wouldn't be able to back out.

_She took aim._

This was the only chance they had of getting out. Between Gomi exploding everything, and Senii's crossbow, there was a slim amount of time where everyone else could get out. The ever optimistically vile voice in the back of their head reminded them that wasn’t it ever so fortunate that they were carrying Senii and Gomi’s packs for them. Bloody fucking luck.

_She took a breath._

Ani felt blood trickle out from their clenched fists, barely registering the fact that they broke skin. That’d be one more thing to deal with. With their filthy nails, there was no way it wouldn’t get infected. This was their last chance. They moved-

All hell broke loose.

And all Ani could do was watch as Senii released her bolt and Gomi lobbed a stick of what they assumed was TNT and their two youngest were surrounded. There was no chance they would get out. They took a breath and prepared to shout when Gomi beat them to it.

"RUN! GET OUT OF HERE! GO!”

“WE'LL BE RIGHT BEHIND YOU!"

Those little liars. Instead of chivalry, instead of kindness, instead of decency, Ani spoke up to the rest of the group.

"YOU HEARD ‘EM! GET THE FUCK GOING PEOPLE! MOVE!"

They refused to let themselves think about it, even when they felt, more than heard, the sickening boom of Gomi's explosives detonating all at once. Enough to take out everyone around him. Stupid fucking suicide bomber. So that was his plan. Ani couldn’t spare the moment to blink away the acrid gunky sheen on the world.

So, if a drop of water hit the snow after the last explosion, no one needed to know.

-

It took them almost three days to find any remains. A pair of hands, scorched and raw with chunks of finger whipped away and foul ooze thick on their skin, still clutching one another in the snow.

Ani honoured their sacrifice though they wished so desperately they didn’t need to. They would learn to move faster.

-

It was barely a month later when Darcy disappeared. All that remained was a thin, silver ring with 'angel' engraved delicately on the inside stowed so sweetly in the hollow of a withering tree. Ani could almost see the way Darcy would have strained to place it at eye level.

After days of searching, they passed out. A saccharine voice joining the hellish heavenly choirs that haunted their slumber with their failure. They didn’t have the energy left to cry.

-

They stood outside the deceivingly empty storehouse, Stel flanking them. His face was unreadable.

"You are going to let me go," His voice was steady. He was sure of his statement. Ani released a short sharp breath, they remembered the look on Gomi’s face. They couldn’t bear to see if Stel had it too.

"We don't know what's waiting in there, it could be too-"

"It's a risk we have to take. You know this." He continued, his gaze fixed on the building in front of him. "This could be our only chance to get some intel, to figure out how to stop all this. I’m ready." They already knew how this was going to end, they could feel it in their bones. They already knew what was going to happen and yet…

"Just, don't take any unnecessary risks, alright?" They closed their eyes as Stel nodded, lips quirking up in the approximation of a smile. They weren’t sure if they knew how to do so genuinely anymore.

"I'll be fine," And with that, he took off into the building, his pistol gripped securely in hands which Ani refused to see the tremble in.

It wasn't even a full thirty seconds later when the building exploded.

Ani let the blast knock them back and lay in the nonchalant dirt, their ears ringing with the peals of broken church bells. Déjà vu flitted into their mind and the chorus sang and sang.

The cynical clinical piece of them took over and they picked themself up, apathetic, to dig through the ruins.

They couldn't recover any of his body.

-

It was supposed to be safe, they had scouted it out beforehand. Ani was sure, so sure, that they wouldn't find them there. And once again, they were wrong.

"Wolf, the floor’s gonna collapse, we have to go!" Ani barked, the hints of desperation clear in their tone. No, no, nononono. Not Wolf. Not here. Despite them, Wolf stood her ground, baring her teeth at the guns pointed right at her.

"I will _not_ let you hurt these children," She glared. She’d said she would protect them. Three of the littlest they’d ever found. They had no idea how they’d survived so long before Wolf had coaxed them from the ruins of what could once have been a home. Ani had promised themselves they wouldn’t get attached. Their heart lurched in their chest, so much for that. Even with the building crumbling around her, Wolf didn't budge.

Later while digging through what was left of the building, Ani found that even in death Wolf kept her word, using her own body to protect them. They choked on dust and the cruelty of the divine when weak cries came from under their friend’s remains.

Little hands reached out and Ani caught a glimpse of their terrified eyes before ripping rubble away to clutch three toddlers desperately close like Wolf would have done. They liked to think Wolf would have been satisfied knowing her charges lived on.

As they carried the openly sobbing babes out of the crumbling tomb they vowed to be as strong as Wolf had been.

They still had people to protect.

-

And of course, of course, it was Ani who found Roy.

Head bowed and swinging softly in the breeze she looked strangely peace. Her eyes closed, finally, all stress lines smoothed from her weary, beautiful, and ghostly white face. Shoes lined up neatly in front of her, ever considerate. Her nails remained pristine, she showed no signs of resistance. A note in her back pocket told them why.

And maybe, just maybe, that's why it took them so long to bring her back.

They had failed. They couldn’t help but wonder if it was them who pushed Roy to this. Heaping so much responsibility on her and practically exiling themselves to their planning. Roy was strong, but they were kidding themselves if they said they hadn’t seen them wear down. Roy was supposed to be their successor. They were supposed to go out in a glorious rage and Roy was supposed to step forward and lead them to safety and security, all with that unending cleverness and uplifting brilliance. Roy who was their friend. Roy who Ani was sure was so much better than them. They may as well have tied the noose themselves in their attempt to haul her to glory. 

This was their fault.

-

Hours or perhaps only moments later they picked themself up. Everyone else, at the very least, deserved to know, and Ani couldn’t tell if it was cowardice or bravery which led them back to their precious dwindling wonderland. They hoped it was bravery.

They would need it, they- _damn it Roy_ \- still had people to protect.

-

When Ahuuda asked them to meet her outside of the camp, they were wary. There was little important enough for them to leave camp and these days they were back to the hidden depths of their own mind. The clouds were looking more and more like flesh as of late or worse, the final puffs of frigid breath from everyone they’d lost, all coalescing to rain down on them when their luck ran out.

Nevertheless, out of trust or a secret wild hope for an end to the madness, Ani followed Ahuuda out into a clear patch in the woods where they could sit. Ani watched carefully with one eyebrow raised, as Ahuuda summoned the confidence to say what she needed.

Finally, she spoke.

"A-Are you doing okay?"

The question caught them off guard. When was the last time anyone had asked how they were? They quite honestly couldn't remember. Resisting the urge to cry, (god they’d gotten so weak) their eyes watered, and they opened their mouth to respond.

"I'm-"

Ahuuda gasped her eyes widening in shock. Ani saw the apology of love and pity, pity, pity in those eyes before the glassy haze slipped over them.

She fell like a marionette, a dagger sticking starkly and disgustingly out her back. Ani roared. They weren’t okay, and honestly? They never would be.

But when they legged it back to camp splattered and smeared with red, red, red, and vengeance sweet on their tongue they couldn’t say it mattered.

They still had people- _were they even people anymore_ \- to protect.

-

Love and pity didn't stop them from slaughtering everything within a mile’s radius so they could lie on the ground with Ahuuda’s long since cold body and tell her everything in hushed whispers and keening sobs.

-

It was the cruellest moment since Adel's silent suffocation when Yu Li was found.

Mutilated and torn, Yu Li lay with bits and bob blubbering off and strewn carelessly in the muddy grass. Veiny egg yolks licked down his face in a cruel facsimile of goopy tear tracks. The flowers he had scrounged together scattered around him like his very own funeral wreath. Ani couldn't stop their stomach from heaving. His hand lay calmly at the hilt of a dagger buried in his own throat, his other mangled limb, for he only had the two left, buried in his own viscera perhaps attempting to hold himself together.

He’d killed himself to stop the pain.

He lay splattered next to Ahuuda's grave. He must have come to leave her flowers.

Ani never managed to wipe the images of the bodies, the bodies they'd made and the bodies of those they loved, piling high from their darkening mind or the curdling eyeballs that followed them. They refused their rations and spent days without sleep pouring over mementoes they guarded with furious jealousy. But when the alert went up they did their job.

They still had people- _at least this meant he didn't die alone, tittered Adel's caring, caring, cruel voice in her ear_ \- to protect.

-

Carefully, Ani led them over the thin ice. They could almost see it. They could get help there. A safe house where there were sure to be medical supplies, they could even lay low for a bit. They were running out of supplies, and although Ani would never admit it, they knew none of them would last for much longer outside. They were loathe to make such a dangerous journey but it was that or starving and they were all far too thin already.

They took another step over quietly twanging ice. They could make it.

They could see it.

It was so close they could make it they would make it-

The noise of the ice shattering deafened them in a way that not even the innumerable concussions had.

They watched in horror as almost everyone was ripped into the freezing water. Over half didn’t resurface, already much too cold they succumbed and left for a slumber Ani themselves was jealous for. In no more than a minute, Ani was staring the devastated remains of their dilapidated cavalcade. The few survivors of the dunk left too far out into the water for them to help.

Furious grief rose through shaking and pained lungs. Wasn't their pyre tall enough already?

Hope sprung eternal when almost blue hand scrabbled out of the icy water weakly. Reacting on instinct, Ani grabbed it, hauling who they soon recognized as Pebble out of the water. His shivering didn't slow as he clutched them, gasping air into frozen lungs.

He would make it, they thought, almost hysterically. Pulling off his soaked coat to replace it with their own, hope slid through their fingers. Out from his jacket fell odd bits of plastic and paper, in an obvious attempt to make him look less skinny. He was already the thinnest person in their group, but without the jacket, his frame was so small Ani honestly didn't know how he made it that long.

"In-in the pocket," He rasped, still gasping for breath. Ani ignored him, realizing that he was almost out of time. They searched their brain for any kind of solution, something, _anything_ they could do, but with the state he was in there was nothing they could do. Ani clutched him close.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry please," The last thing he managed to say was barely a gurgle through blue, blue, blue lips before he went limp.

"Please, keep them safe,"

In the end, it was one of the cruellest things he could have asked.

-

They later found all the medicine that he had never taken, as well as all his protein powder and nutrient tablets stored safely in his left pocket. Ani passed it on to Kae without much fanfare.

-

After the ice and with their paranoia in bounds Ani elected to protect the end of the group, leaving Sketch at the head. They were so young, but Ani knew they’d changed with the wonderland. Ani hoped everything they’d taught them was enough. They trusted Sketch. Nothing came from behind and with a sinking feeling that made them believe they left their dumb luck in the lake, Ani was the last to the top.

Well met, they thought with an unbearable giddiness towards the massive steel doors, impossibly shut, and Kae sat on a rock with her head down. Ani would think up a million metaphors if they could butterfly away the truth.

"Kae?"

"It was a trap," Her soft hair hid her eyes, but the tear tracks told them enough.

_God_

"Are they?"

"No," Kae tittered. "Not yet. It's my choice."

Ani knew Kae. Something was wrong, and they couldn’t do a damn thing.

"...Whatever's going on right now, I trust you." Ani spoke surely. Some things never changed. 

"You trust me?" Kae stood and Ani saw her face. Eyes devoid of light but glinting with that same manic flavour Ani had seen before and adored. For a moment Ani wondered if it was love or ghosts fluttering sickly in their chest, sweet and precious and everything they’d done all this for. But they knew better than to care about the ghostly promise of vermin that would one day partake of their flesh.

"Wrong. Fucking. Move." She lifted a gun and shot. An impact bloomed across their side. Ani thought of Yu Li’s flowers. They grinned to mirror Kae’s own tear-stained expression. She didn’t need to speak, Ani knew, but she did anyway. Ani didn’t mind, they loved Kae’s words.

"If there was any hope, you told me to take it." Anguished eyes knew that there had been none, the deal she cut had never been true. But any hope, any hope, was better than none.

_BOOM_

Ani stood. Blood gushed from their side enough for the world to fuzz at the edges, but the pain didn't come.

The safe house exploded, Kae disappearing swallowed in the rubble, and surely finishing everyone inside.

They dropped to the ground. It was done. Their reason for living, everything they had in life, was gone.

They had no one left to-

"Mom!" A weak cry from the rubble called out. Sketch.

They still had someone- _Sketch, Sketch, Sketch, first and most favoured, last to part with because of course, of course, they'd cared less about everyone else, they hated what they'd become_ \- to protect.

Clutching their side, Ani forced themselves up, staggering in a way Kae- _or her shade_ \- would have told them was a more dramatic death march than they deserved. Shame they had no clicky boots.

They forced their way through the rubble, scattered droplets of gore marking their final journey.

There lay Sketch impaled straight through the gut with curling metal rod. Ani choked on air and empty promises.

"Ani," They rasped, their voice barely a whisper but the loudest sound Ani had ever heard. "Momther… It hurts, it hurts so bad. Please- _please_ make it stop," Ani took a deep breath.

"I know kid, I know. It's gonna be okay, alright? All the pain's gonna go away now, don't worry," They pulled out a dagger, trembling hands steadied with the knowledge that it had to be quick. "Don’t worry. Just relax and close your eyes. I gotcha kid. Just sleep. You never get enough anyway."

Sketch closed their eyes and in exposing their throat a small soft smile slid onto their face. Ani wished they were poetic enough to give Sketch something better. Final words, a song or something, a memory of something they’d once said. But they had nothing. In one swift moment, they steeled themselves and ended it.

Sketch gurgled a final definitive sigh and then they were alone.

Ani heaved pungent acid into the dust and it burned and burned all the way up and out. The wound in their side was paltry, it wasn’t enough.

But it didn’t matter, they were out of time.

The world around them swam in a kaleidoscope and the crumbling edge of plateau enticed them further with a siren call of freedom.

They didn't resist. The darkness embraced them as a beloved friend, avoided for far too long, and they lurched over the drop. And when they shut their eyes and felt the wind whip past they couldn’t help but put it all back together in their mind. Wishes were dangerous, oh so dangerous, but it didn’t matter anymore.

After all in this end, they didn’t have anyone left to protect.

**Author's Note:**

> Ni-hilism: Look. Yes, I did just write a thing where everyone died. Yes, it was fun. Am I considering writing more? Yes. Will I write more? We'll see. Darcy, I blame you for all of this. Darcy wrote the whole outline. I just made it sad(der). Asstol, your art is brilliant and I blame you for this as much as I blame Darcy. That said if you weren't mentioned, tell me and if, if, there's a next chapter then maybe, maybe, you can be the POV character.


End file.
